


a perpendicular expression

by bog gremlin (tomatocages)



Series: dance au [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dance, Caretaking, Companionable Snark, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dancer Keith (Voltron), Dancer Shiro (Voltron), Established Relationship, M/M, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27643783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatocages/pseuds/bog%20gremlin
Summary: After practice one afternoon, Keith twists an ankle (and is furious about it). Shiro helps him limp back home.Dance AU: the established relationship continuation
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: dance au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021251
Comments: 15
Kudos: 118





	a perpendicular expression

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sinspiration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinspiration/gifts).



> ils is a very good friend and threw prompts at me, so please thank them for any enjoyment you derive from this continuation of _[heights of fancy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27525898)_.

“Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.” — George Bernard Shaw (attributed)

* * *

If it had happened to anyone else, Shiro reflects, it would have been a good story. They might have gotten dinner out of it, or at least a round of smoothies at the company gym: dancer renowned for poise and grace backflips out of the path of a passing ambulance and lands badly on the one loose paver on the entire block. The whole story could become a dance routine in and of itself, with lots of controlled windmilling and exuberant balance postures. It would be a fun program to watch, and even more fun to dance, one of those choreography sequences that would leave Shiro’s abs aching from the extensions and contortions. That’s the best kind of performance: one that looks easy, but is ruthlessly hard.

Keith… doesn’t tell a good story on the best of days, and this is one of his worst. 

“It wasn’t a whole backflip,” he says crossly when Shiro tries to jolly him out of his mood. “It was a brisé — a bad one — and I was an idiot for landing that way.” 

Ambulances are a common sight in the city, and the corner store near the dance studio is renowned for its terrible sidewalk. Shiro’s never sprained anything out here, but he’s stubbed his toes plenty of times, or misjudges an uneven square of pavement and kicked concrete instead of stepping over it; he can sympathize with Keith’s embarrassment. No one likes making a misstep.

So it’s true, Keith’s maybe an idiot — or just unobservant, which can happen to the greatest of dancers, especially when they’re trying to keep their boyfriend from stepping in dog shit when an ambulance swings around the corner, fast but not so fast that it’s running its lights. But even if Keith’s not the  _ greatest _ of dancers, Shiro thinks he’s pretty good. The fall had been beautiful to behold. Shiro is almost glad he’d been at an impossible angle and so hadn’t attempted catching Keith as he fell; he’s so attuned to the way Keith’s body moves through the air that Shiro might not have caught him, ahem, appropriately. 

“Well,” Shiro says. “May I have the honor of helping this idiot find an icepack? I don’t think you’re an idiot,” he adds. “Unlucky, maybe.”

Keith cracks a smile at that and uses Shiro’s arms to pull himself all the way to his feet, favoring his ankle. It’s absolutely a sprain. “Hey, I’ve got a primo ballerino standing around and offering to take me home,” he says. “That’s not so unlucky.” 

Fortunately or unfortunately, they were just leaving the corner store. Shiro leans Keith against the front window (“Okay, really, it’s not  _ that  _ bad”) so he can run back in for extra ice and a bottle of off-brand acetaminophen. He knows Keith won’t go to Urgent Care, and really, there’s no point: the both of them are old hands at minor injuries like this. It’s painful, but more than that, it’s inconvenient. For Keith, aching to prove himself even after their last recital and its incandescent reviews, this type of injury is mortifying. 

Keith talks Shiro down from carrying Keith home on his back like a child, or like one of those technical backpacks Allura uses when she goes hiking in the backwoods.

“You just got the one bottle of painkiller, yeah?” Keith says. He’s trying to be funny, but he’s so uncomfortable that his tone, usually a little coy and fond when he’s talking to Shiro, sounds flat with irritation. “That won’t do a damn thing for the two of us if you pull your shoulder carrying me.”

“I carry you all the time,” Shiro points out. They’ve gotten written up in the newspaper for it. Shiro’s mom has a framed photo of Shiro holding Keith in a gravity-defying lift: Keith’s hands are clasped about Shiro’s neck, their heads are bent together, and Keith’s body is curving upwards and backwards so his legs float in the air, Shiro’s hands beneath his thighs for support. It’s Shiro’s favorite photograph for a variety of reasons. Keith is focused one hundred percent on Shiro and Shiro is giving him that same focus right back. The minimal drape of Keith’s costume emphasizes his lean grace, and his birthmarks and Shiro’s prosthetic are blindingly visible; they’re on stage, under a spotlight. There is no artifice. His mother has promised to get a copy printed up for their apartment once Shiro convinces Keith to officially move in. She absolutely included it in her last family update email to all the cousins.

“Not for six blocks and three bus transfers, you don’t,” Keith snaps back, like a commute can even hold a candle to the amount of time they spend in the practice studio, or to the amount of work Shiro puts into maintaining his muscles. But Shiro doesn’t argue; he summons a rideshare on his phone instead.

“Don’t worry,” he says over Keith’s protests, bundling him into the back of a green Honda Civic from the early ‘90s. “I got the split fare one, it’s going to take us almost the same amount of time to get back to my place as it would if we took public transportation.” Shiro’s capable of making sacrifices, and this is a hallmark of compromise: both of them are unhappy. Shiro’s pretty sure his dad would be proud of him. He’s always going on about how it’s important to make concessions in a relationship, because doing so apparently builds character.

Shiro, of the opinion that Keith has spent too much time building character, puts in his ear pods and gives his boyfriend the gift of stewing in silence for the entirety of the forty-minute ride back to Shiro’s apartment. He’s saving his strength for the apartment’s stairwell. It’s a historic building, and there’s no way he’s risking Keith’s life in that elevator. 

Shiro gives their driver four stars because she doesn’t ask questions and, upon seeing Keith’s murderous expression in the rearview mirror, turns up her stereo loud enough that they could conceivably have an argument camouflaged by the burbling, interested voice of Scott Simon leading the way through another NPR  _ Weekend Edition _ interview _.  _

“Have a good one,” she calls out her window as she peels off, likely hoping she won’t be called as a witness in a missing persons case. Shiro won’t be surprised if his passenger review reads  _ he was fine when I left the parking lot _ . 

“Okay,” Shiro claps his palms together, imitating their latest stage manager during technical week. “I’ll take the groceries up, and then — ”

“I can take the elevator, Shiro,” Keith says. The rideshare seems to have softened him up a bit around the edges — though that might be his ankle, which must be throbbing by now — and Keith’s reverted to his usual demeanor, albeit one that involves near-audible jaw-grinding. 

“Mmmmyeah, no,” Shiro says. “I wouldn’t put anyone in the elevator, it’s a deathtrap. Mrs. Collins in 7E has a forty-pound cattle dog and she carries it down the stairs three times a day for walkies; the woman’s eighty. I trust her judgement.”

Keith huffs a sigh and adjusts his backpack. He carries most of the groceries when they go shopping anyway, and Shiro doesn’t usually have the gumption to suggest trading off who takes the weight. As much as he loves Keith, he shares a certain number of tendencies with the shelter dogs Shiro’s oldest sister rehabilitates. Keith likes knowing who’s around him, and he likes having a job. The backpack — carrying the groceries, which Shiro paid for, it was his turn — is Keith’s job. Taking care of Keith is Shiro’s. 

In the end, Mrs. Collins herself emerges from the stairwell, panting and with an armload of alarmed canine. She eyeballs the situation for a split second before “young man” -ing Keith into submission. 

“Take the stairs,” she shouts over her shoulder as she herds her dog out the front door. “It could save your life!”

It doesn’t do to go against the decrees of Mrs. Collins; she has eyes everywhere. 

The stairs take an age to ascend. Shiro doesn’t mind it so much. Keith lets Shiro carry the backpack, and he even lets Shiro half-lift him at every rise and across the landings. It’s almost like a very long warm up, one without music and underneath the weird multicolored lights the super installed last Hanukkah and never switched out of the stairwell . 

It feels like a workout, too. They both need showers by the time they reach Shiro’s apartment ( _ are  _ the views on this floor worth it? He’s no longer sure), but Shiro bypasses the bathroom and installs Keith on the loveseat in front of the laptop Shiro keeps hooked up to a projector in lieu of buying an actual television. 

“I’m in the mood to be amused,” Shiro says. “Think you can come up with something?”

Keith rolls his eyes, but — it’s a job — settles in, propping his ankle up on the footstool at Shiro’s prompting. (Shiro doesn’t believe in putting feet on coffee tables. He has at least three ottomans in the apartment, because his feet are his goddamn livelihood. Getting Keith to adjust to that amount of self-care was so rewarding Shiro had dedicated his weekly dessert to the occasion.)

The ankle looks bad. Not bad as in,  _ he’ll need surgery _ or  _ we might as well take the whole leg off _ , but bad as in Shiro’s going to have to make a couple of corner store runs over the course of the weekend; his ice cube trays aren’t up for the kind of output Keith will need to RICE his way to Tuesday’s class. That’s what happens with sprains: they’re viciously inconvenient. Keith will heal.

Keith scrounges up a mildly illegal bootleg of some Victorian gardening show while Shiro makes him an ice pack and wrestles manfully with the child-proof cap on the painkillers, and then moves over to make room for Shiro to squeeze next to him on the loveseat. It’s really not a big enough chair for two men, not when one of them is Shiro’s size. Shiro is refusing to upgrade, but he’s not sure that Keith has noticed: Keith doesn’t notice furniture as a general rule. 

“Sorry for snapping at you,” Keith mutters. He holds out his hand and looks away; Shiro laces their fingers together. 

“You’re forgiven,” he says. “I kind of like it when you get bossy, anyway. It’s cute. Like an angry kitten.”

“Pfft,” Keith laughs. “What are you, then, a big old lion?”

“King of the jungle,” Shiro says placidly.  _ Three, two, one —  _

“Oh my God,” Keith says, with the instantaneous reflex of a person raised on a diet of public broadcast nature programming, “lions do  _ not _ live in the  _ jungle _ , I thought you were educated — ”

Shiro interrupts him by leaning over, pulling up the hem of Keith’s tank top, and blowing an exuberant raspberry against Keith’s abdominals. He might give Keith’s abs an appreciative lick while he’s down there, but a gentleman never tells. Then he rolls halfway on top of Keith, careful not to jostle his ankle, so he can undo Keith’s bun and coax his hair out of the impeccable twist. There are a lot of bobby pins involved.

Despite any lingering irritation, Keith submits to the gesture without complaint. Shiro always feels inordinately pleased with the amount of bodily trust Keith offers up at the drop of a hat, because watching Keith dance is like watching a wild animal move. Shrio always gets a little thrill that Keith likes it when Shiro touches him, that Keith seeks that touch out. 

“Now you look relaxed,” Shiro says, tucking the pins into his pocket where he’ll forget about them until Keith needs one or it’s time to do laundry. “You should let your hair down more.”

The ice and acetaminophen must be doing the trick. The pinched look has fled from Keith’s face, and he’s looking how Shiro likes him best. Keith’s hair is heavy and soft, and he rarely wears it down. He’s an anomaly at the Garrison Academy in that he never uses those mesh donuts some of the chorus dancers use to get their hair into a perfect donut atop their scalps. It’s all  _ his _ hair. Keith doesn’t really get why Shiro likes it so much, and Shiro has trouble putting it into words. Mostly, he thinks that Keith is pretty, and Keith with his hair down is pretty in a way that feels increasingly private and specific to time spent cuddled together at home. The ankle injury is unfortunate, but it’s also a little like having a tiny vacation. They’re marooned in loveseat until the ice in the ice pack melts, and then Shiro will re-wrap Keith’s ankle and they’ll probably do their stretches while they decide what they’ll have for dinner. Shiro’s recovering from a stint as a vegan; Keith is flexible. 

(“You are what you eat,” he’d deadpanned once, lifting his leg up over his head in illustration. He'd resembled an extremely attractive exclamation point.

“I said  _ vegan _ , not  _ virgin _ ,” Shiro had sniped back, winding his arms about Keith’s waist so Keith had no choice but to rest his raised leg on Shiro’s shoulder. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, I know a snack when I see one.”

“Neither of you are allowed to speak in my presence ever again,” Allura had said.)

Later, in bed, Keith tosses restlessly until Shiro gets up and retrieves a couch cushion to shove at the foot of the bed for him to bolster his ankle with, raising it enough that some of the throbbing recedes. It’s the kind of thing Shiro’s parents did for him when he was young and first getting serious about dance, and doing it for Keith now reminds Shiro of how much love goes into taking care of another human being. It uses different muscles that the ones he needs to lift Keith into the air, or do a series of fantastic barrel turn leaps across a stage. Shiro thinks of this as a form of cross-training, a subtle duet: reading Keith’s movement and finding ways to support it, even when lying down. Even with the music off.

As Shiro settles back under the covers, Keith throws his arm across the bedclothes, feeling for the shape of Shiro’s chest in the dark. Shiro likes this quirk, the way it feels like Keith is looking for Shiro and finding him right where he ought to be. 

“You really were beautiful, before you came down wrong on your ankle,” Shiro says consolingly. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I wonder if anyone at the Garrison could choreograph something like that.”

“Like me falling on my ass?”

“Like the arrival of spring,” Shiro says. He had a classical education. It’s made him poetic.

Keith rubs Shiro’s pec thoughtfully, in a way that indicates he might be willing to finish something if Shiro rolls over to start it. “I could ask Regris,” he says. “That kind of thing is more Marmora style than Garrison, if you want to incorporate how jarring it was. Bet it’d be a cool isolation.”

Shiro thinks about starting something. It would be easy, and Keith is warm and soft under the blankets. It would be easy: he could slip his hand beneath Keith’s sleep shirt and trace the way his birthmarks bloom across his back. In the dark, the port wine stains look like flowers blooming across Keith’s pale skin, and Shiro never tires of admiring them. 

But he’s warm and content himself, and more than starting something, he’s committed to finishing their conversation. 

“Do you want to try that?” He asks. “Branching out, I mean, or isolation. I know the Garrison hasn’t been the most straightforward school to be associated with.”

“Maybe,” Keith sighs. “Marmora’s doing some interesting stuff nowadays. Reg told me that they’re doing an in-house series for the next recital where they draw styles out of a hat, so they all try something new.”

“Didn’t they do that on a season of  _ So You Think You Can Dance? _ ” Shiro loves that show. It’s an indicator that Keith loves Shiro in return, because Shiro will occasionally open his email inbox to find a link to a curated Youtube playlist of dance highlights from old seasons. Shiro would never collect those links for himself, but he cherishes every single one Keith finds for him. It’s a love language. 

“I think that’s every season of  _ So You Think You Can Dance _ ,” Keith says, not unreasonably. “But yeah, it seems like a cool way to try something out without signing up for a whole quarter of lessons. No theory work, no interminable Garrison protocol — just start moving.”

Shiro can see the appeal of that kind of project, especially for Keith, who is restless down to his bones. Keith’s willingness to extemporize on existing choreography is a delight to work with, because it gives Shiro permission to play in a way that’s otherwise hard to cultivate in his professional life. Now that he’s built a career and laid so much groundwork of his own, the Garrison approach  _ is _ a slog. More than anything, dancing with Keith keeps opening Shiro’s eyes to all of the things they could do together, if they put their minds to it.

He rests his hand on top of Keith’s, part to caress him and part to keep Keith from his tendency to cop a feel. It’s Keith’s way of doodling: he has to keep moving his body in one way or another, dancing or tapping his feet or caressing some part of Shiro’s person, because that’s how he thinks. Shiro’s generally a willing sacrifice. 

“Well, what say you we try out?”

“Huh?”

“For Marmora. I mean, I’m not ruling out a reality dance show,” Shiro says. “But I think doing a spotlight series at a studio across town is going to be easier to negotiate with our contracts and schedules. But it sounds fun. I know you’re more than capable, and I could use something new. I’m getting old. Don’t want to get boring.”

“You’re the one who decided to bleach your bangs like it’s the fuckin’ nineties,” Keith says, but he sounds — happy. His voice is small in the dark, a whisper. “We could go next week. After class. If you still want to.”

“So we’ll go,” Shiro says. “It’s a date.”

Keith half-rolls up and kisses Shiro’s shoulder before rolling back, removing his palm from over Shiro’s heart. Well, it was a bit precious to hope they could fall asleep like that: neither of them really like to cuddle when at rest. 

“Better get some sleep,” Keith yawns in Shiro’s ear, humid and a little minty from brushing his teeth before bed. “I’m injured, after all. I need my rest.” Shiro feels a little giddy and triumphant, like he’s crossed a bridge, passed a test, like he felt when Keith first agreed to dance with him. 

“You’re the one who’s still talking,” Shiro whispers back. He’s got his eyes closed, so he can’t see the gesture Keith makes; but odds are, he’s giving Shiro the finger.


End file.
